


Surrogates

by Canaan



Series: Major Arcana [17]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Ninth Doctor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm 900 years old, Rose.  I can't raise a couple kids and then watch them die."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surrogates

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the OT3 H/C Bingo fic-a-thon over at BetterWithThree on LJ. The prompt was "children." Falls sometime after "This, Too, Is Love" in my Major Arcana series.

Shemsa hated being this far out. These weren't the waters he'd grown up with--these were Joro's waters, and he'd learned them only slowly in the years since he'd met his love and bound his life to hers. They were well out of their usual range today, but the blackfish had been poor this year, and Joro swore that they could fill their nets with the succulent _teel_ that schooled around the Four Sisters in this season.

The dire black fingers of the Four Sisters loomed off their starboard side. Pet, Joro's near-cousin, had the tiller while she and Shemsa held tight to their net. Suddenly, he felt it wrenched out of his grip. Joro swore colorfully as she kept the net and lost her footing, splashing into the ocean and then bobbing to the surface, net still grasped in her hand. She said, "Shemsa, take the net. There should be more water beneath us . . . we're caught on something. I'll swim down and free--"

Shemsa reached for the edge of net that she offered. The sea swelled abruptly, tearing their little boat away from the net. "Joro!" Shemsa cried as the ocean drank her down.

The last thing he heard was Pet shouting "'ware the rocks!"

***

  
The Doctor watched Mol and Polla slumping dejectedly against each other where they were curled against the bole of a downed tree. He ought to say something, he thought, to try to cheer them up--wasn't that what one did, with children? He was so good at talking, but this regeneration seemed to lose all its words when things came down to domestics. The lads had spent a full day collecting dead fish, taking it from one relative to the next in hopes of someone, anyone, letting them in.

They didn't really understand why their parents weren't coming back. But they knew they had no home.

This was the trouble with sticking around once the crisis was over. He'd seen the warning signs (well, Rose was the one who'd actually noticed the water receding and the fish flopping around on the newly-exposed shore, but _he_ was the one who knew what it _meant_ ), and they'd had just enough time to get everyone into the TARDIS and dematerialize before the tsunami rolled through the fishing village.

It wasn't until he let the people--the children and grandfathers and heavily pregnant women who weren't out with the boats--back out onto the shattered strand that had once been their home that it occurred to him that their ordeal had only just begun. The trees were shattered and uprooted, drowned in salt for miles inland. The fruit that remained on the ground was all there would be for some time to come. The fish that gasped away their lives would have to be carefully preserved against some very hungry seasons. This was a subsistence-level society, and no one was prepared to feed two boys whose parents hadn't made it home with the rest of the fishermen--no matter how much they might care for Mol and Polla.

Rose had started out surprised, and run quickly through upset and angry to furious. She couldn't understand how anyone could just turn the children away--especially their own relatives. She felt responsible, probably partly because they'd saved the boys, taking them on the TARDIS with all the other villagers. But mostly, the Doctor thought, just because she was Rose, and she cared about people.

His other partner was in an even worse way, and the Doctor didn't know why. Jack had been delighted they'd managed to save the people (not humans, but near enough), but his good mood had grown progressively more strained as he and Rose realized they'd shepherded two orphans out of the TARDIS. Disbelief had given way to a dawning horror he couldn't quite hide. The Doctor had no idea what had happened to Jack to raise such a visceral response. When Rose wondered aloud what happened to orphans who didn't have any relatives, he turned an unhealthy grey, the thousand restless motions of his discomfort coming to a head.

"If they can't stay here, I guess they'll have to come with us." Rose mused, her voice thin with the uncertainty of the situation. "I'm what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? When Mum was my age, she already had me. Of course, if you're going to be a mum, you mostly get nine months' warning . . . "

Jack swallowed hard. The Doctor shook his head. "There are orphanages in other--" He broke off as Jack turned and bolted down the strand, disappearing behind a stretch of rocky rubble. "--times," he finished weakly.

Rose stared after Jack for a startled moment. The Doctor set his hand on her shoulder before she'd taken more than a step after him. "But . . . " she said, her eyes still on the point where Jack had disappeared.

The Doctor shook his head. Whatever it was, it was Jack's story to tell. And Jack wasn't ready. "Be a bit unexpected for him to suddenly be a dad, too. Let him have some time."

Rose looked over her shoulder at Mol and Polla unhappily. They'd just lost everything they knew, but taking them along on the TARDIS wouldn't make it any better, no matter how responsible she felt for the boys they'd saved. Her shoulders sank and she sighed. "Orphanages?" she said.

He let his hand fall to her waist, drawing her close to him. "We'll take them to an orphanage in another time," he offered. "We can do that much for them. They're young enough to adjust. But we can't keep them on the TARDIS, Rose."

She let her head rest against his shoulder. The weariness of the gesture pained him. "I suppose you couldn't have children underfoot while we're running about the universe," she said.

He understood then, and his breath caught in his throat. That's what this was really about, whether she realized it or not: the _idea_ of children. Her children, some day, and Jack's. The Doctor was suddenly, painfully reminded how young his partners were--and somehow, he had to make sure she understood. It wasn't just these two lost and grieving boys that were the problem: it was _all_ children. And if that hastened the day that she and Jack left him . . . well, they still deserved that choice.

He exhaled slowly. "It's not the underfoot," he said. "That part's easy--wouldn't be any more underfoot than anyone else I've traveled with." He ignored her scowl and the elbow she dug into his ribs. "So they're young--so what? Love teaching, me." The memory of the early days with Susan in the TARDIS--teaching her the different switches and controls, listening to readings rattled off in her piping voice from across the console room--still made his heart hurt in the best kind of way. "But . . . "

Her expression softened, and she prompted "But what?"

He looked away from his very young partner and a future he wasn't ready to face. "'m 900 years old, Rose. I can't raise a couple kids and then watch them die."

***

  
Shemsa's eyes opened on twilight, although it had been mid-morning when the wave came. He was sure his head had swelled to the size of an overripe _sorn_ melon and his scalp burned with the unmistakable feel of salt in an open wound.

He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet and determined that his legs would hold his weight, although his right knee burned fiercely. A quick tour of the jagged rocks turned up no sign of Pet, and Joro . . .

He couldn't think about Joro right now.

The boat had made its way onto the third Sister with him, though dragging it from between the rocky spines where it had wedged took him until full dark. It was the worse for its rough beaching, but he thought it would float. He had to get back to shore--to see if, against all hope, the boys survived . . . if any scrap remained of the life he'd built with Joro. A swell like that was bad enough on the waters, but they'd have ridden it out if only ( _if only!_ ) they hadn't been so close to the Sisters. But when such a wave approached the shore . . .

His people called it Loshe's Hand: the wave that swept the world away.

***

  
It was the middle of the night before Jack limped out of the debris field the tsunami had left behind, using his wrist strap for a torch, of all things. Too bad he hadn't thought of that before he twisted his ankle. The Doctor and Rose were more or less where he'd left them, though there was a small fire there now (one of dozens strewn across the beach where there'd been a thriving village this morning), and Rose had dragged a couple of blankets out from the TARDIS. Mol and Polla slept on one of them, but Rose lay awake, tossing and turning restlessly on the other, while the Doctor sat beside her, watching.

It was the Doctor who heard him coming first, of course--not that he was particularly stealthy, between the ankle and his other strains and bruises. Those blue eyes made a sympathetic inventory of his small injuries in the moment before Rose sat up. She turned and looked at him, wincing. "I'll get the dermal regenerator," she offered, starting to stand.

Jack held up a hand to stop her. She hesitated, then settled back down--either trusting him or humoring her irrational partner. The Doctor reached over to squeeze her knee, then looked back to Jack and patted the blanket between them.

Jack shook his head, too agitated to hold still and too wrung out to hold together in the face of his partners' sympathy. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced the circle of uneven light thrown by the low fire. "Sorry," he said. That was the first thing he had to say, the most important thing. "I didn't mean to worry you, but I wasn't really thinking straight."

It was Rose who answered. When he'd thought about it, he'd worried he might have made her feel guilty. He was right. "It's okay," she said, too quickly. "I hadn't really thought what it sounded like, and I don't know what . . . what happened to you, or what your family was like, or anything from before the Time Agency, really. You don't go out of your way to talk about where you come from--you and the Doctor are a right pair that way. I never thought . . . " She fumbled for the right words and Jack swallowed hard. The Doctor slipped his hand into hers.

Jack forced himself to take a long, slow breath. "Not your fault, sweetheart. Mostly, _I_ try not to think about it either." His eyes drifted out over the unseen ocean in the dark.

"About what?" she murmured eventually.

Jack really didn't want to tell this story, but his partners deserved an explanation after he'd run out on them like that. "Samantheé and Kirsta," he answered her. It hurt to squeeze out the words. He heard Rose's sharp intake of breath and refused to look. "I was in the final year of my enlistment when I bumped into Kirsta. There was a bar fight on the orbital base where we were stationed, and then we ended up killing time together in the drunk tank for twelve hours--"

"Killing time?" the Doctor asked dryly.

This was where Jack was supposed to raise his eyebrows and make a smart remark, but he . . . couldn't, not when he was still seeing the sway of Kirsta's long brown hair and smelling the synthetic lavender oil Samantheé used as a scent. "When they let us out, she took me home to meet the missus. Samantheé fell for me every bit as hard as I'd fallen for Kirsta." He felt his lips curved in a half smile. "We made it work."

Rose's eyes were dark and puzzled in the firelight. She was still so young in so many ways. She hurt because he hurt, Jack knew, but it was the first time she'd really been faced with the fact that her partners had had partners before they ever knew her.

Jack looked away. He couldn't watch them right now, not if he wanted to get through this. "I reenlisted--Kirsta was already into her second term. After a couple of years, Samantheé wanted kids--Kirsta's and my kids. She had an older genotype, and her health had never been good. She'd known since she was a teenager that she shouldn't ever try to carry children, and she wasn't interested in passing those genes on to our kids. Kirsta was fine with kids in general, but she hadn't been born female any more than I had, and kept comparing pregnancy to having a parasite."

Rose made a soft sound of . . . protest, Jack thought. He heard the Doctor quieting her, but he ignored it. If he stopped, he was never going to get through this. "It didn't bother me the same way. A uterine implant was just another medical procedure, Kirsta and I would make gorgeous kids, and Samantheé would be a great mother." It had seemed easy at the time. Nobody could've convinced him he'd feel something about being pregnant. That he'd know there was a life inside him, even though the unformed heart wasn't beating yet. That the hormones that let their child grow would make him do stupid, crazy things and his partners would forgive him anyway. "We even refused to know if the technician was implanting a boy or girl. We wanted it to be a surprise." His voice broke on the last word. He'd stopped pacing and folded his arms across his chest to rub his shoulders, like he was trying to keep warm.

He hadn't even noticed the Doctor and Rose getting up when Rose wrapped warm arms around him. A moment later, he felt the Doctor at his back, and if a Time Lord wasn't exactly warm, the Doctor's strength behind him made it easier to continue. "We were stationed at Samos VII when somebody managed to sneak a contagion with a long incubation period past decontam."

"Oh, lad," the Doctor murmured.

Rose still didn't understand. Jack could feel the question in her body. "It was a pretty rough bug, but it wasn't meant to be fatal, mostly--just incapacitate us and keep us out of the way. Kirsta was out on an extended field mission. But Samantheé . . . didn't make it." Rose stiffened in his arms and then hugged him tighter. He closed his eyes. "I didn't even know it at the time--I was too sick. Pregnancy does some crazy things to your immune system. All I remember is waking up and knowing the baby was gone."

He was crying, but with his partners' arms around him, it seemed like too much effort to free a hand to wipe his eyes. "How old were you?" Rose asked.

He shrugged, like it didn't matter. "Twenty-four . . . " he said, and then stumbled to a halt. He was long past having to lie about his age. "Well, twenty-two, really. Kirsta and I . . . couldn't be together anymore. She asked for a separate deployment. She got it."

"And I was talking about being a mum," Rose groaned. "God, Jack, I'm so sorry."

"Not your fault." Jack bent to kiss the top of her head. "And not the kids' fault, either. They just lost their parents. They shouldn't have to lose everything."

"They won't," Doctor said. Jack found himself tense for a moment before his partner said, "We'll take them forward to an orphanage about four hundred years from now. Not as good as leaving them in this time, but at least they'll be with their own people."

Some of the tension drained out of Jack's shoulders, and he hugged Rose tighter and let the Doctor hold both of them.

"Thought we'd leave it till the morning," Rose said. "No need to wake them up. Unless . . . "

"No, morning's fine," Jack said quickly. He couldn't deal with the kids right now. "I could do with some rest, myself. Is there room on that blanket for one more?"

"Always," Rose said.

***

  
Rose was sure she hadn't magically got sand under her eyelids while she slept, but it certainly felt that way. What with being up half the night waiting for Jack, and then dreaming strange dreams about plagues and wars and Jack being pregnant with the Doctor's baby, she only hoped she could convince the Doctor to go do something dull today, like an art museum or shopping for TARDIS parts. Then she wouldn't feel guilty about staying aboard and catching a nap.

She was folding up their blankets while Jack put out the fire and Mol and Polla helped, throwing handfuls of sand on the embers. The Doctor was a bit away, pacing and looking at the odd bit of jetsam mixed in with all the other debris on the shore. Too restless to hold still very long, that was their Doctor. But he _was_ a very good teacher--even when he wasn't trying. Or maybe especially when he wasn't trying. In her dream, she thought that he was going to make a very good dad . . .

"Daddy!" one of the boys shrieked.

Rose spun around to look at them just as the other one chimed in and the pair went pelting down the beach toward a weary stranger with a halting gait. Exhaustion fell away from him as he spotted the boys. "Mol! Polla!" came the answering cry.

Jack sagged with relief. The Doctor smiled and draped an arm around his shoulders. Rose walked over and leaned against Jack's other side. "Every so often," she said, "a miracle happens without us. Makes this a good day, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Jack said, a lopsided smile on his face. "It does."

***

  
The water of life streamed down Shemsa's face, and he went to his knees and held open his arms. His sons ran into them and he held them to his heart. He hadn't dared to hope . . .

"Loshe, Loshe, merciful Loshe," he murmured into Pol's hair.

Joro was gone. He would know that every day of his life. But he still had their sons, and that was reason enough to go on living.

***

  
Back aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor didn't even talk about a destination. "Sleep," he said. "The both of you. Can't take you anywhere if you're so tired you're walking into walls."

 _Is it that obvious?_ Rose wondered, lacing her fingers through Jack's. "Dermal regenerator, then a shower, then sleep," she agreed. "You joining us, Doctor?" she asked.

He shook his head, never looking up from the console. "Got some calibrations I want to do. Had an awful lot of ignorant hands near sensitive controls yesterday. I might be in later."

Rose bit her lip. He was sending the two of them off alone, and she was too tired to pick out why. "Right. Dermal regenerator," she repeated, tugging at Jack's hand and steering the two of them down the TARDIS's corridor toward the med bay.

"I'd rather shower," Jack said, numbly amused.

"And I'd rather not watch you wincing the whole time we're _in_ the shower," Rose overruled him.

Between the two of them, she and Jack managed to work their way through all the minor injuries he'd got running away last night. But it took both of them, fumble-fingered with fatigue. "Just as well we don't have kids on board," she said. "Forget that I'm not ready to be a mum--'m obviously crap at skinned knees."

Jack looked at her sideways. "I don't think anybody's ever 'ready' to be a parent. But . . . you kind of get used to expecting it."

Rose smiled tiredly and shook her head. "I think I'd better not," she said, trying not to sound disappointed over something she hadn't even thought about wanting until yesterday. "Wouldn't want to do that with anyone but the two of you, and that's not going to work."

Jack slid off the med table and wrapped an arm around her waist. "It doesn't have to be like that," he said gently. "It's like you said--usually, you have something like nine months to get used to the idea. And yeah, I'm glad we're not going to be stuck with the boys. That would've been . . . really rough for me, and not real good for them, either. But on the other hand . . . " he trailed off, his eyes looking off into nothing for a moment. "No kids means no skinned knees. No high-pitched shrieking in the corridors. No searching the library for bedtime stories or cutting the crusts off toast in the morning." Rose leaned her head against his shoulder, and he stroked her back. "No little fingers clutching at your trouser leg or little arms hanging around your neck."

The thick sound in his voice as he thought about it was familiar--because she felt the same lump in her own throat. "Might not be so bad," she said softly. "Someday."

He laced the fingers of his free hand through hers. "Might not," he agreed.

***

  
It was only human to want to breed. Genetic continuation wasn't the same thing as immortality, but most short-lived species were evolutionarily predisposed to react as if it were. Even born three thousand years apart, Rose and Jack were two of a kind that way.

And him the odd man out.

The Doctor stared at the bedroom door. He didn't have to go in. It wasn't like he _needed_ to sleep just yet. He could wait until his partners were awake and they could have another adventure. By the time they were done, he'd have shaken off this mood and be ready to enjoy this fantastic life they were living together--for as long as it lasted. Only . . .

Only, there was Jack. Jack's telling of the grief seemed to have released some of its pain, and not having two small boys on board as an unexpected and constant reminder helped a bit, but the Doctor still remembered the stricken look on Jack's face when Rose talked about being a parent. That wouldn't go away all at once, and memories that deep brought restless sleep and dark dreams. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be there more for Jack or for himself, to reassure himself his lover was okay.

He opened the door and began undressing, even as he heard Jack's breathing change. Jack's eyes were half-open as he pulled back the bedclothes beside him. The Doctor smiled a little, in spite of himself, and took the invitation, settling into bed and letting his lover pull him close. "'bout time," Jack muttered.

The Doctor ignored that. "You all right?" He soothed his hands up and down Jack's back, working his thumbs into the small knots of tense muscle there.

Jack sighed and leaned his head against the Doctor's shoulder. "Yeah. Kind of wrung out. Relieved-- _really_ relieved. Maybe a little disappointed. But all right."

The Doctor grunted. Humans--bundle of contradictions, they were. But at least Jack wasn't . . . mourning, anymore.

"Are you?" Jack asked.

The Doctor flinched. He knew he flinched, and with Jack this close to him, there was no way his partner could miss that--half-awake or no. "Eh? I'm fine, me. Why wouldn't I be?"

Jack sank his teeth into the Doctor's shoulder, just hard enough that he couldn't ignore it, and then answered, "You sent me and Rose off alone together for no good reason. You never do that unless something's wrong."

"What? Wrong? Nothing wrong, I just needed to recalibrate the-- Oi!" he protested as Jack bit him again, harder this time. His complaint was loud enough that Rose stirred in her sleep. "Stop that--we'll wake Rose!"

"She'll want to know what's wrong, too," Jack pointed out.

Humans were so _bloody_ persistent sometimes, and his partners were no exception--if anything, Rose was worse than most of them. " _Nothing's_ wrong," he said, momentarily ignoring his own admonition to be quiet, "it's just . . . I mean . . . " He trailed off, appalled to be caught without words, defenceless, without his oldest shield and sharpest sword. Jack made an encouraging noise, like that would somehow help! "You're not the only one who's ever lost a child!" he blurted.

He couldn't believe he'd just said that, especially knowing how the day's events had tumbled Jack's own memories and emotions about. Rose half-mumbled something, waking in her usual hazy, muddled way. Jack tilted his head back far enough to look his lover in the eyes and raised a hand to cup his cheek. The Doctor swallowed. "No one should have to outlive his own child," Jack said, his own eyes deep with old grief.

"And that's why I can't, you see. Any of you. Adric is really dead, because I watched him die. But Sarah Jane is still out there, somewhere, somewhen, living a fantastic life because I left her behind to do it." He's babbling, he knows he's babbling, but he can't seem to stop. "And what am I supposed to do when it's you and Rose? Bad enough to lose her, but your children? The ones I've fed and changed and dandled on my knee?"

Jack pulled him close. Rose dragged herself into a half-sitting position and combed her fingers through his hair. "Don't go borrowing trouble, Doctor," she said. "We might all get killed tomorrow in a space station explosion or eaten by an angry octolion. With what we do, it isn't half likely, but we don't let it change the way we live."

The Doctor shook his head in mute denial. Jack said, "Besides, what's with all this 'you and Rose' business? Why wouldn't we have little Time Lords running around the TARDIS? You're hardly likely to outlive _them_."

The Doctor stared past Jack's shoulder and tried to come up with something to say, some way to tell them that that was impossible . . . except it wasn't. From a technical point of view, there was no reason why not. But he'd been the last of his kind for what felt like ages, and would he really want to change that? To subject the universe to more Time Lords? Gallifrey's culture would die with him, but everyone else always seemed to think that it wasn't cultural, it was biological, and then there was him, the sport to end all sports . . .

"Not like you have to worry about it, really," Rose said, her voice suspiciously dry and her eyes alight with mischief. "If my mum ever finds out I'm pregnant by two blokes--and one of them's an alien!--she'll kill us all."

The Doctor gave her a look of abject horror while Jack spluttered a laugh. "She's got a point, Doc," he said. "Worry less about the kids you don't have and more about the mother-in-law you _do_."

"Mother-in-law?" the Doctor yelped.

"Oi! What else d'you want to call her?" Rose asked with a glare.

The Doctor looked from her down to Jack, who was biting his lip, he was trying so hard not to laugh. The Doctor swatted his hip. "This is all your fault."

"Hey!" Jack complained. "You're going to blame _me_ for our kids? That kind of trouble generally takes two, you know."

Rose elbowed him. "And in our case," she said firmly, "it takes _three_."


End file.
